Ballroom Marfa Art Fund
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Film

Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film

20 Jul 2017

Venue

Marfa, Texas
Free

Screening + Q&A

Ballroom Marfa presented a screening of Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film, followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Sam Wainwright Douglas, artist Raven Chacon, and producer David Harstein.

Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film follows art collective Postcommodity as they strive to construct Repellent Fence, a two-mile long outdoor artwork that straddled the U.S.-Mexico border. Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist, three Native American artists who “put land art in a tribal context.” Aided by the communities on both sides of the border in 2015, the artists installed a series of 28 inflatable spheres emblazoned with an insignia known as the “open eye” that has existed in Indigenous cultures from South America to Canada for thousands of years. The spheres were evenly spaced apart and extended north and south of the border a mile in each direction. 

The film provides an intimate glimpse into the arduous process behind creating an ambitious artwork that gives voice to the shared history and enduring culture of Indigenous societies that have made the region their home for thousands of years before a border ever divided it. Interwoven with this thread are lush scenes using stunning cinematography to absorb viewers into striking land art environments that have preceded Postcommodity’s work. Scenes with other artists and intellectuals working in the land art realm provide context and insight as well. These include scenes with Chris Taylor of Texas Tech University’s Land Arts of the American West program, writer Lucy Lippard and Matt Coolidge of the Center for Land Use Interpretation. 

This event was free and open to the public.

Trailer